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Separately, either of these things doesn’t make sense. But together, it raises a serious fucking red flag. Yulian is watching me, gauging my reaction to the freeze-frame.
“What is this?” I rasp, feeling unsteady.
“I had a few motion-activated cameras installed in the less-used stairwells and back rooms. These cameras aren’t monitored, but I’m alerted to unusual activity. This stairwell should have been quiet during the party.”
“Blyad,” I say, an agitated hand running through my hair. I know I will not like whatever comes next.
Yulian presses play on his keyboard and sits back in his seat. The video is grainy because of the low light, but it shows Bianca in the service stairwell, about to make her way upstairs, before a lone male intercepts her with a hand on her arm. She turns, startled. He pulls her off the first step, where they engage in an intense conversation.
“What the fuck was he doing there? He wasn’t invited.” My mind reels trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. But that’s the problem, there’s little to see. Jorge’s back is to the camera and while Bianca is facing the camera, she is bathed in a deep shadow.
“Did she tell you about this?” Yulian grunts.
My jaw tightens. “No.”
Their exchange lasts for only a few minutes before Bianca continues up the stairs, and Jorge exits the camera’s view.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I rail, anger blazing down my spine like a bolt of lightning. “How did he make it past security?”
Yulian shakes his head. “Let me worry about that. You need to worry about what’s going on with your wife.”
“You think they’re working together?” A battle plays out inside me. On one hand, I don’t believe it, don’twantto believe it. But on the other hand, there is no reasonable explanation for their secret stairwell meeting. Or for Bianca to not tell me about it.
Yulian’s mouth is set in a hard line. “It doesn’t look good.”
“Have you shown this to anyone else yet?”
“It was just brought to my attention. I thought you should be the first to see it.” He runs his thumb across his upper lip. “I’d say this is the proof you need to convince Andrei that Jorge can’t be trusted. Because whatever is happening here is not good.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I yell, anger swallowing me whole. I curl my hand around our wedding picture propped on my desk and hurl it at the wall. Fuck. Violence is the only way to calm my raging nerves right now. My next victim is the decanter on the bar cart.
Yulian leaves the room and lets me rage. I’ll smash, burn, and destroy everything in my sight until I’m too broken, too numb to feel anything at all.
* * *
I’m barelyable to form a coherent sentence by the time we pull up to the estate. I’d forced Yuri to stop at every watering hole between Brooklyn and East Hampton, and like a goodsoldat, he’d done his job and kept his mouth shut, accompanying me into every seedy dive bar I demanded we visit. He supported my weight once I got too sloshed to walk in a straight line as we left the final bar on my route to hell.
After we pull up to the estate, I have a vague notion of Yuri trying to help me from the back seat, but I shove him off, and when he doesn’t get the message, I pull a gun on him.
“Crazy motherfucker,” he mutters, slamming the door and stomping off. It’s true. I am a crazy motherfucker. A heartbroken one, too, and I need to be left alone in an alcohol-fueled abyss. So I curl up in the back seat and allow sleep to be my savior.
* * *
It feelslike I’ve been dead to the world for days, but in reality, I wake up only hours later, curled on the hard leather seat. I have a throbbing headache, a mouth full of cotton, and a cramp in my neck. In short, I’m a fucking mess. But worse, I’m no longer drunk. I’m no longer a mindless pool of incoherence. I’m way too sober for my liking, and there’s no more running from the truth: Bianca used me like a pawn for her own advantage. Why, and how deep her betrayal goes is what I need to figure out.
Stumbling from the SUV, I enter the mansion quietly and get a drink of water from the kitchen. After chugging it down, I chase it with an espresso and two aspirin. I have to be sober for what I’m about to do. Well, get mostly sober. Bianca deserves that much—for her final judgment to be from a sober man.
I’ll catch a few more hours of sleep on my office couch before I confront her. The hallway is dark and empty. Not a surprise, considering it’s three in the morning, and the guards don’t roam the halls unless movement is picked up on the cameras.
I fling the door to my office open and then pause. It takes my brain a moment to register what I am seeing.
Bianca.
On her hands and knees.
Groping the underside of a potted plant. What in the fuck?
She jumps up, her face pale, frozen in a mask of surprise. “Daniil.” She reaches out to me, but then drops her hand, seeming to think better of it.
